Here is another little fact. Found this while digging through news for Canon's stock (spurred on by one of the other threads here on CR). Seems Canon has ranked third in overall patents filed in the US last year. That means Canon filed a HELL OF A LOT OF PATENTS!!

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Canon U.S.A., Inc., is a leading provider of consumer, business-to-business, and industrial digital imaging solutions. With approximately $45.6 billion in global revenue, its parent company, Canon Inc. (CAJ), ranks third overall in U.S. patents registered in 2011* and is one of Fortune Magazine's World's Most Admired Companies in 2012.

I believe the idea that Canon is not an innovative company with the horsepower to compete is a load of troll crap. As I've been saying, there is nothing to prevent Canon from stepping up their game and ultimately giving Nikon a run for their money. And the notion that they couldn't drop a few billion on a new semiconductor fab if they wanted to...another load of troll feces...they have a$45 billion dollar global revenue. A billion dollars is barely more than pocket change.

Additionally, another strong mark for Canon that Nikon just doesn't hold a stick to is their customer support, which apparently has been award winning for nine years:

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In 2012, for the ninth consecutive year, Canon U.S.A. has received the PCMag.com Readers' Choice Award for Service and Reliability.

Canon is a huge company . Canon has double sales compared to a large companies like IKEA

Canon is a small company regarding cmos sensors and compared to Omnivision and others

The camera division is a small part of Canon , the sensor division a lot smaller than the competisionsCanon is not even on the list with their own name

Ok. No idea where that pie chart came from, so I can't verify its accuracy.

Here are some more facts. Canon's business is primarily based on sensors of one kind of another and optics of one kind or another.

Here is a report on their business units that covers three years. Within this report, Canon indicates they have three major business units: Office, Consumer, Industry/Other. All three of these business units produce products that use CMOS sensors and chips. From a revenue perspective, the Office unit, 53.6% of Canon's overall revenues, rakes in $24.5 billion. The Consumer unit, 37.5% of Canon's overall revenues, which covers all the photography, video, and printing stuff we are interested in (except imagePrograf printers...which are part of the Office unit) brings in $17.1 billion. The final and smallest unit, their Industrial products and everything else, 11.7% of Canon's overall revenues, brings in $5.3 billion. Canon's Industrial products division is capable of building the kind of equipment required for a semiconductor fab, such as Semiconductor Lithography units.

According to another report about Japan's local business (I assume this is just the local business, not worldwide like the above report, as Canon's worldwide revenue in yen is in the several trillions):

A full 27%, almost 1/3rd, of their business is consumer imaging. That 27% brings in around ¥164 billion in revenues. Another 49% of their business is business solutions. This largest segment brings in around ¥297 billion in revenues. Another 5% is industrial equipment, which involves a lot of sensor tech and optics, brings in around ¥30 billion in revenues. The final sector of Canon is their IT software, which is about 19% of their business. Not really sure what this division covers. This sector brings in ¥115 billion in revenues. There is also another ¥26.3 billion Canon simply chocks up to "Other". That is a total of ¥632 billion yen each year. In US dollar terms based on the current exchange rate, those numbers are:

Even in US dollar terms, Canon's division related to consumer imaging, photography, video, etc. is almost a third of their business, and their second largest division from a dollar amount. Just about every device they ship from their consumer imaging division (including lenses) has at least one cmos chip in it. Every single actual imaging device, be it a DSLR, EOS-M, P&D, bridge camera, video camera, whatever...contains an image sensor and other CMOS devices to process pixels. They don't necessarily make ALL of those chips (many of their cheaper P&S cameras use CCD's manufactured by none other than Sony), but they make a significant percentage of them. And thats just the imaging division. The Industrial Tech division is also a heavily dependent on CMOS sensors and image processing chips. Hell, office products like printers and copiers require sensors. Canon most definitely has a significant need for a large CMOS production facility.

</strong>I’m told that the coming big megapixel camera is a very new sensor design/overhaul. The emphasis is in the dynamic range of the sensor. Performance is said to be on the level of medium format, even better than the impressive D800.</p><p>The same person also says the camera won’d be a “3D” or any other “D”, it will get an all new naming scheme.</p><p><strong>EF 35 f/1.4L II<br />

My opinion on how this should go.

This camera should be a 5DIIIs or some such name (a sensor, software, and processing pipeline only upgrade to the 5DIII), released at $3599 or less with a simultaneous price drop on the 5DIII to $2799 or less. It should most certainly include at least one still-image crop mode that really crops, including the raw data, to allow faster frame rates, smaller sizes, and a deeper raw buffer.

Really Canon has a way to increase megapixels by a firmware update soon to be released. The 1dx/1dc/1dxs all the same camera just diff firmware lol...For those hell bent on facts and info, i apologize for making lite of this but i am feeling a little wiley right now.

Really Canon has a way to increase megapixels by a firmware update soon to be released. The 1dx/1dc/1dxs all the same camera just diff firmware lol...For those hell bent on facts and info, i apologize for making lite of this but i am feeling a little wiley right now.

Really Canon has a way to increase megapixels by a firmware update soon to be released. The 1dx/1dc/1dxs all the same camera just diff firmware lol...For those hell bent on facts and info, i apologize for making lite of this but i am feeling a little wiley right now.

I didn't realize the firmware update would affect the 1D X. I can see how you might be able to use firmware to improve the resolution of a video camera. I thought the 1D C was downsampling the pixels off the sensor anyway. Couldn't a firmware update allow it to sample every pixel, or add some form of RAW/native output?

Mikael added that pie chart which is correct for the June 2012 standings of all CMOS/CCD standing. However that has little to nothing to do with what is going on as Omnivision and almost everyone else named there is a cellphone/small sensor manufacture. Cellphones, car backup cameras, security video cameras, ect.

To add a little more to the pressure that Canon is having it's all in the numbers. Nikon and Sony are the only places Canon is feeling any pressure from in tech from but companies only care about these numbers.

As jrista said, Canon may or may not have the tech to beat Nikon/Sony but why should they go out and drop money on new stuff when selling the same stuff is working quite well making almost 10x as much as Nikon last year.

//all numbers come from the companies 2011 financial report. Nikon and Sony are numbers from the entire company

It makes him feel important, in his own little egotistical mind. (just my opinion)

Mikael popped out of nowhere and started to make many posts about Canon sensors in this as well as Fred Miranda forums. He is either a kid having fun on the internet or a truly disgruntled owner of several Nikon/Canon/Hasselblad/Leica products.

In any case, even though I doubt he has any factual evidence to back his assertions, I feel that it is not necessarily a bad thing to repine about Canon sensors. It's the same with DXOMark: full of garbage but some of their basic (not projected or opinionated) findings are correct. Canon ought to step up their sensor technology especially with regards to their low ISO dynamic range.

The problem is this: does any of this whining get to Canon management and do they have the means to solve it?

To add a little more to the pressure that Canon is having it's all in the numbers. Nikon and Sony are the only places Canon is feeling any pressure from in tech from but companies only care about these numbers.

As jrista said, Canon may or may not have the tech to beat Nikon/Sony but why should they go out and drop money on new stuff when selling the same stuff is working quite well making almost 10x as much as Nikon last year.

//all numbers come from the companies 2011 financial report. Nikon and Sony are numbers from the entire company

They are #1 in worldwide market shares for both interchangeable lens as well as fixed lens cameras. In the former category, their market share is ~ 40%, compared to Nikon's 30%; the remaining 30% is shared among Olympus/Panasonic/Sony/Pentax/Fujifilm. Clearly, they are dominating the charts.

As you said, this is also their problem. Why should they innovate and improve on anything when they are already doing so well? The only way to make them sit up and listen is to stop buying their products...

Unfortunately, I am still very enticed by their 6D...

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generalstuff

As I new member find comments here about DxOmark disappointing , just because some of you do not understand them, and they produce a result you don't like, is no reason to accuse them of not being reliable. Maybe you should seek to understand what they measure before you damn it.

As I new member find comments here about DxOmark disappointing , just because some of you do not understand them, and they produce a result you don't like, is no reason to accuse them of not being reliable. Maybe you should seek to understand what they measure before you damn it.

It's not they are not understood. Their derived data are just plain wrong sometimes while their RAW data is fine.

generalstuff

As I new member find comments here about DxOmark disappointing , just because some of you do not understand them, and they produce a result you don't like, is no reason to accuse them of not being reliable. Maybe you should seek to understand what they measure before you damn it.

It's not they are not understood. Their derived data are just plain wrong sometimes while their RAW data is fine.

It's not they are not understood. Their derived data are just plain wrong sometimes while their RAW data is fine.

Explain

Well, the obvious example is the DR score on a sensor like the Nikon D800 - DxOMark reports that as 14.4 EV, while the sensor has a 14-bit analog-to-digital converter meaning a real, measured DR of 14.4 is electronically impossible for the sensor. If you look at the raw data they actually measure, before their flawed method of normalization, it's 13.2 EV (which is, of course, very good...just not impossibly good).